Just days away from the first school strikes, here are the top five myths hanging over the teachers’ dispute.

The moment of truth — or dare — has arrived for teachers and politicians. Now, after a year of browbeating from the government and breast-beating by the unions, parents are panicking over the spectre of strikes.

Who to blame? Both sides claim the moral high ground, but their competing narratives are deeply tangled. Just days away from the first strikes in elementary schools, here are the top five myths hanging over the teachers’ dispute:

1. There’s so much bad blood that the two sides aren’t talking:

Taking stock of the wreckage last month, Premier Dalton McGuinty tapped former chief civil servant Tony Dean to bring “fresh eyes” to the dispute as a secret go-between trusted by both sides. When Ken Coran heard from Dean, he brought his Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) to marathon negotiations at the Ministry of Education’s 22nd-floor offices.

When a midnight deadline lapsed on Nov. 11, Coran picked up where he left off with a group of local school boards and cobbled together tentative deals. Then came the unexpected twist: Coran’s own membership in York Region and Hamilton voted down the deals.

2. For teachers, it’s not about the money:

Teachers keep tweeting and protesting that they’re fighting over a matter of principle — a controversial law passed last September that restricts their right to strike and imposes a template for any final settlement. That doesn’t explain why their unions couldn’t reach agreement during the seven months of unrestricted negotiations beforeBill 115 was unveiled in late August.

When last-ditch talks resumed last month, it was all about pay and benefits: unused sick pay “gratuities” are worth tens of thousands of dollars for some teachers. They agreed on face-saving sweeteners that would add about $56 million to the pot. They also haggled over how many unpaid days off the teachers would accept.

3. The government has been “holding a gun to the head” of the teachers’ unions from the start, precluding any genuine give and take:

After boosting teachers’ pay by 25 per cent since 2003 (12 per cent since 2008), there is no doubt the government took a hard line this time, egged on by economist Don Drummond. His landmark report targeted wage hikes, an outdated salary “grid” (which rewards younger teachers for years of experience and extra credentials), and the $1.4 billion liability from sick day payouts upon retirement.

The negotiating process worked with the Catholic and francophone teachers’ unions. They won 10 sick days instead of the standard six for other civil servants, and got to keep a delayed salary grid in exchange for three unpaid PD days.

4. The OSSTF dare not negotiate any deals lest they undermine their separate court challenge to Bill 115:

This canard could kill the best hope for labour peace in Ontario’s schools. The unions have long claimed Bill 115 violates the Charter of Rights, but their case is hardly a slam-dunk.

Previous court rulings merely stipulate that governments must try consultations before legislation. The fact that Queen’s Park successfully negotiated a deal with the Catholic teachers this spring already weakens the court case.

Nor can the OSSTF now pretend that it never had productive negotiations with local school boards. Voting down those deals won’t persuade judges that Bill 115 prevented those talks from taking place.

5. The teachers’ unions have been spoiling for a fight because they don’t know how or when to back down.

Not true. While the elementary teachers’ union remains hard to fathom — boycotting negotiations, stopping extracurricular activities and going on strike — there has been a discernible strategy from the other unions. The OSSTF waited longer to play its hand, ultimately twisting itself into a pretzel to show it could bargain better than the Catholics.

But Coran may have been too clever by half: His rhetoric against Bill 115 roused his membership so much that they refused to give up the fight when he came back with a deal.

“Change requires a lot of education of the members,” he mused in an interview.

When it came time to explain the turnaround, “I guess we didn’t do a good enough job.”

Put another way: He was so persuasive in talking teachers up that he couldn’t talk them down.

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